Today many configurable components or devices, such as intelligent devices for industrial control or automation systems, are supported by a mixture of various device-specific, data-specific, and/or network-specific application tools. These tools provide an inconsistent and widely varied set of features and functions depending on the selected software application's focus and the devices supported by that application. In many cases the exact same device feature is supported in a completely different manner in a different software application or on different devices that provide the identical or similar feature or function.
In addition not all software applications support the same set of devices or provide the same set of features. The result is that the user experience relative to a given configurable component (e.g., intelligent devices) varies widely from device to device and from software application to application. For example the user experience relative to configuring a particular motor starter by using one widely known configuration package can be significantly different than when performing the exact same operation on the exact same device in another available configuration package. Accordingly, configuration for a diverse set of components or devices can entail a great deal of expense for numerous monolithic packages and can also be confusing or frustrating to users who must switch between different applications with different interfaces, instructions, and feature sets when managing this set of components or devices.